Forums Hacked

[Raelynn]

The three free tools that are indispensible for me are AVG, Ad-Aware and Winpatrol.

Having spent 4 years working at the help desk while at college, I have to agree on those tools. We had a good corporate virus scanner, so AVG wasn't as much needed. Ad-aware was extremely needed. Winpatrol I had not heard of, but I think the things some people would like, I had learned to deal with by hand (though it's a heavy hand sometimes).

One other program that I strongly reccomend in addition is spy-bot. It does the same thing as Ad-aware, but it isn't a corporate program. This means that it can take out some programs that sneak their way onto the system, even though they technically "ask" the user, which ad-aware is not allowed to do.

Also, if you know a lot about the workings of your computer and what should and should not be running, use hijack this. It hits some of the harder to reach areas that other programs don't, but it doesn't hide the good stuff. It shows everything and lets you decide what shoudl and should not be there. Use it at your own risk.